Her Mistletoe Cowboy

Garrett turned around just then, as he had been doing every couple of minutes to make sure that she was still following him.

“Something wrong?” Garrett asked, pulling up on Wicked’s reins.

Even though he was leading the way and going so slowly he was afraid Wicked would fall asleep in midstep, the woman didn’t exactly fill him with confidence about her navigational skills.

He saw the stunned expression on Kim’s face. Her mouth had all but dropped open.

Now what?

When her eyes shifted toward him, he saw the confusion in them.

“Where’s the main house?” she asked, then said, “That’s the cook’s quarters, right?”

Garrett inclined his head, as if in agreement. “Uh-huh. The cook’s quarters, the main ranch hand’s quarters, Jackson’s quarters—along with his wife, Debi—and, oh yes, my quarters, too.”

“All of you live there?” she asked, as if the concept hadn’t quite sunk in.

“Uh-huh.” His eyes never left her face.

Kim’s eyes widened as her driving definitely slowed down to almost a crawl. It was as if her little car had gone on automatic pilot and was now driving itself.

She chewed on her lower lip before asking, “That’s the main house?” If she was trying to hide the appalled note in her voice, she was failing.

He had to admit, after having talked to her for a couple of minutes, her reaction didn’t come as much of a surprise.

Garrett laughed. “Let me guess, you were expecting South Fork.”

Her eyebrows knitted together, as she struggled to hide her disappointment over the building she saw. “South Fork?” she echoed. “What’s that?”

“Something obviously before your time,” he told her. Then, not wanting to seem old in her eyes, he added, “Before mine, too. Except that I like watching old, classic TV programs. To answer your question, South Fork was this big, sprawling fictional ranch just outside of Dallas that belonged to this really rich family whose members were always arguing and at each other’s throats all the time. But I’ve got to admit, the ranch house they had was a thing of beauty,” he told her. “This might not be South Fork,” he allowed, “but it’s all ours.”

There was no missing the pride in his voice.

To each his own, Kim thought, stifling the urge to shrug at his response. If that ranch house up ahead had been hers, she would have done whatever she needed to in order to make it look better in a hurry—and then she would have sold it as fast as she could before the buyer could think twice about the wisdom of getting stuck with a rundown house and a ranch that wasn’t producing much of anything except work.

As if reading her mind, Garrett leaned down from his horse and promised, “It’ll grow on you.”

She wasn’t going to be here long enough for that to happen, but for now, she kept that fact to herself.

Before she’d left, she had told Stan that she would write the best article she could on the Healing Ranch, but after seeing the place, she estimated it shouldn’t take her more than a day to whip up her article. Two if she deliberately stalled and didn’t get started for the first day.

And since she wanted to get out of Prairie Gulch as fast as she could, she would get started as fast as she could.

Kim prided herself on knowing how to put someone at ease so that they would confide in her.

Looking at the house as she drew closer, she promised herself to “make nice” with the people out here, get her story—or rather Stan’s story since he was the one who was so keen on it, not her—and then get back home. If she were particularly diligent, she’d be back in time to hand Stan her copy and then go shopping at Barneys, the New York–based department store that had found a second home in San Francisco and had become one of her treasured stomping grounds of choice.

With that in mind, Kim turned up her smile several watts and told her guide in the sweetest voice possible, “I think it’s charming.”

Garrett laughed, not taken in for a second, although he had to admit she was the prettiest liar he’d ever had to deal with.

“No, you don’t,” he contradicted. “But that’s okay, it’s not supposed to be ‘charming.’ It’s supposed to be functional. And it is. This is where the ‘bad’ boys get sent in order to be turned into human beings, something that my brother, Jackson, does, time and again, very, very well.”

“And you? What do you do?” she asked. She’d stopped driving for a moment and was taking in the ranch in its entirety.

Did it get any less run-down from close up? She certainly hoped so. She was planning on taking a few photographs to go with her article and right now, she didn’t see a good angle to use for her shots of the ranch house’s exterior.

“Anything I have to,” Garrett said in response, his voice dropping by an octave or so. Enough to get her attention and have her wondering things that wouldn’t be finding their way into the article.

“Define ‘anything,’” she requested in a mildly intrigued voice.

“Just what it sounds like,” he replied, looking at her and punctuating his answer with a wink that seemed to flutter directly down into her stomach, causing just the slightest mini–tidal wave to take place there.

Kim paused to take in a discreet breath before continuing. The breath was to help steady her unexpected reaction to this dusty cowboy who fancied himself a ladies’ man.

“I’ll pin you down for details later,” she told him. “Right now, I’d like to meet your brother before I go into town to see about my hotel reservation.” She glanced at her watch before continuing to drive toward the ranch house. “I’m already running late,” she realized. “How long will they hold a room at the hotel?”

Garrett had to struggle to keep the laugh from surfacing. The hotel wasn’t exactly beating off patrons with a stick.

“As long as it takes,” he finally replied. The corners of his mouth curved despite his best efforts to keep a straight, if not dour face.

She wondered if everyone in this quaint little dust bowl of a town talked in circles. Just what was he telling her about her hotel room? “I don’t think I understand.”

“We don’t exactly have a lot of tourists coming through Forever,” he told her. “There’s no danger of losing your room to someone else, not unless a twister suddenly comes through, taking down every building except for the hotel. That happens, then you might have to be concerned about losing your room to someone else if they get there first. But until then, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. You’re in the driver’s seat, trust me.”

That didn’t make any sense to her. “If that’s the case, how does the hotel stay in business?”

“Good question,” he acknowledged. Kim struggled not to feel resentful, as if she was being patronized. “The hotel belongs to this construction company that sees it as getting some sort of a toehold in the region,” he went on to explain. “The owner’s not in it for the money,” he confided. “The way matters had turned out, the general contractor wound up owning the building—and she’d married Finn Murphy, so her stake in building up the town has definitely gone up.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” Kim told him, certain that Garrett was making this all up, trying to pull the wool over the outsider’s eyes with this tall tale. Who wasn’t in it for the money? If not that, then they were in it for the prestige, the way her parents were. And this was definitely not a place someone came in order to build up their reputation.

Just how naive did this man think she was?

Did she come across as naive? Kim caught herself suddenly wondering.

That was not the image she was going for. Smart, sassy, capable, those were the buzz words she was after, not naive.

“A lot of things in Forever and the places around it don’t really seem possible,” Garrett informed her. “Forever isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill kind of place.”

“Oh, God, just like Brigadoon,” Kim murmured under her breath before she could think better of it and stop herself.

Garrett had overheard her despite the fact that she had meant the comment only for herself, but the reference went right over his head.

“Like what?” he asked, looking at her quizzically.

A strapping he-man like Garrett White Eagle undoubtedly thought all musicals were products of stupid, self-involved minds. She wasn’t about to give him ammunition to use against her. This job was going to be hard enough as it was. She wanted to be taken seriously—even by this cowboy.

“Never mind,” Kim said dismissively. “It’s not a real place, anyway.”

Garrett had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but he felt it wasn’t really polite to tell her that. So, at least for now, he just let Kim’s remark slide.

“Well, Forever’s real, all right,” he assured her. “It’s just different.”

She took a deep breath, more than a little relieved to be able to distance herself from the subject. “I’m beginning to see that,” she replied.

She drove the rest of the short distance to the ranch house and got out of her car. Garrett dismounted almost parallel to her vehicle and let the palomino’s reins drop to the ground in front of him.

Walking away from Wicked, he stepped onto the front porch.

Kim looked at his horse uncertainly. She fully expected to be trampled any second if the horse got it into his head that she was standing in his way, blocking his access to something.

“Aren’t you going to tie him up?” she asked, shifting closer to Garrett.

She was banking on him protecting her if the horse suddenly went rogue—or whatever it was called when horses charged at people for no reason.

“Wicked’s not into bondage,” Garrett told her with a grin.

The cowboy was making fun of her because she was clearly out of her element, she thought. Since she needed his help—at least for the moment—she did her best not to act offended.

Instead, she told herself to try harder to get on this cowboy’s good side. The faster she got this story down, the faster she’d be back in San Francisco, mistress of her own fate—with her rent paid.

“No, I mean won’t your horse take off if you don’t tie his reins to something?” she pointed out.

“Not unless you plan to scare him,” Garrett said with a laugh. And then he answered her question more seriously. “Wicked’s trained to stay wherever I put down his reins. He knows not to run off,” he told her. “That comes in handy when we’re out on the range and there’s nothing to tie him to.”

Kim glanced from the horse to his rider. She wouldn’t have known how to begin to train an animal for something like that—which was why, among other reasons, she’d never gotten a pet.

“That’s pretty clever,” she said honestly.

“Wicked’s pretty clever,” Garrett corrected, giving the animal he had trained the credit he felt the stallion deserved.

While he regarded animals to be smarter than a lot of people realized, he was aware that, like people, some animals were smarter than others. In his estimation, Wicked was exceedingly smart.

“Be right back,” Garrett told her, going inside the house.

“Okay,” Kim said cheerfully. The man was modest. Getting on his good side with flattery was going to be harder than she thought, but she was determined to do it. If she could get him to open up, she was confident that all the details she needed for this article would just come pouring out of him and the story would wind up writing itself.

Twenty-four hours and she was going to be out of here, she promised herself.

Thirty-six at the most.

Life with two overachieving parents and two overachieving sisters had taught her to hedge her bets—up to a point. Although, from what she could see, there wasn’t anything to write about here that could possibly keep her for even as long as a whole day, could it? she wondered. The brothers had a ranch, they worked with so-called troubled kids and they had some horses around. End of story. The challenge would be to flesh all that out to even a minimum length of words.

Kim frowned to herself. She doubted that anyone would want to read what she’d just outlined in her head. There had to be some kind of an angle she could use to at least make this article somewhat interesting instead of the snooze-fest it was shaping up to be.

“Jackson’s not here,” Garrett told her as he came out of the house a couple of minutes after he’d gone in. “He’s probably at the corral, still working with the boys.”

“Okay.” Turning around on her heel, she left the porch and headed toward her vehicle again.

Instead of following her, Garrett remained where he was—on the porch—and watched her. When he saw her opening the door on the driver’s side, he asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting into the car.”

“Why?”

Maybe she’d misjudged the man’s mental acuity. He certainly hadn’t struck her as being slow, but what other explanation could there be for his not understanding what she was telling him?

“So I can drive to the corral.” He wasn’t picking up his horse’s reins. Why? “You are going to lead the way on your horse, right?”

Instead of taking Wicked’s reins, he came around to her side of the vehicle.

“You don’t need the car,” he told her, shutting the door for her. “We’ll walk.”

“Walk?” Kim echoed in surprise, as if she was unable to fully grasp the concept.

“Walk,” he repeated gently, taking her hand in his and fully intending to coax her along if he had to. “It’s what people do when they put one foot in front of the other.” He grinned. “You’d be amazed at how much ground you can cover that way.”

Kim was hardly listening to him. Instead, she looked around the immediate surrounding area. She didn’t see anything beside the ranch house.

“Just how far away is the corral?” she asked.

Amusement highlighted his eyes, but he managed to keep a straight face as he replied, “Close enough not to have to take a canteen with us.”

The straight face didn’t fool her for a second. This time, she called him on it. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he told her innocently, then added, “I might, however, be teasing you a little.” In the next breath, he apologized. “Sorry, I don’t get to have much fun. Working with Jackson and a bunch of boys can get pretty serious at times and I don’t get into town much.”

She sincerely doubted that. She might not know much about ranches and towns in the middle of nowhere, but she felt she was pretty good when it came to judging people, and Garrett White Eagle did not strike her as a man who was resigned to living some sort of a monastic life. He looked, instead, like a man who knew how to have a good time.

He also struck her as someone who knew how to read people and work an angle.

This ranch, it suddenly occurred to her now that she wasn’t distracted, cursing at defunct Wi-Fi signals and guidance systems that refused to guide, could be a perfect source of income. Parents were known to become desperate when it came to trying to save an offspring who was on the road to self-destruction. One that would bring them everlasting shame, not to mention huge lawyer fees and who knew what all else if those kids really got going. And then one day, they hear about this supposedly altruistic place that promises to heal their wayward liability, turn him into a pillar of society for what they were probably told would be a “reasonable” sum of money.

Who wouldn’t be sucked into taking a chance on that? Especially when rehabs were notorious for their rate of turning out repeat violators.

An article like that could almost write itself, she thought as she all but trotted next to Garrett, doing her best to keep up.

But why bother when Garrett could practically write it for her? Or, at the very least, give her the lead she wanted to go with.

“Just how much can you and your brother pad the bills for these boys without arousing the parents’ suspicions?” she asked, almost sounding breathless as the question came out of her mouth.

Garrett stopped dead in his tracks just shy of the corral. Had he just heard what he thought he just heard? Because, if he had, the last thing he needed or wanted was for Jackson to get wind of this writer’s current mind-set.

He needed to change her mind, fast—or, barring that, he needed to send her on her way.

Also fast.

Chapter Four

Garrett wasn’t about to take another step until he got this cleared up.

If Jackson even caught a hint about what this woman was mistakenly thinking regarding the Healing Ranch’s bottom line, the interview—and any business resulting from it—would be totally dead in the water, especially since Jackson hadn’t been keen on having someone do an in-depth article on the ranch in the first place.

Garrett approached denial carefully, knowing that if he was heated in expressing his feelings, Kim was bound to think there was a story buried here.

“I don’t think you have the right idea about what we do here,” he told her.

Kim had given up believing in an altruistic world a long time ago—probably somewhere around the time she went into kindergarten, thanks to her older sisters who had made sure that she knew there was no Santa Claus, no magical elf who gave for the sake of giving.

Kim believed that everyone, no matter who they were, wanted to get ahead. That didn’t necessarily make it a bad thing. After all, money was what made the world go around. Wasn’t she here, doing a story that held no interest for her and was nothing more than a puff piece, just because she needed to pay the rent?

“From what I’m told by my editor—who’s very high on this place, by the way—you and your brother do a really good job with these troubled teens, so why shouldn’t you be compensated?”

“There’s a difference between ‘compensated’ and the word you used. ‘Padded’ has a whole different meaning attached to it,” he pointed out.

She hadn’t meant to insult him. If anything she admired the White Eagles for what they did. They were good at something and they were making it pay off while helping kids out, as well. It seemed like a win-win situation from where she stood. Why did this cowboy look as if she was guilty of throwing rocks at his brother and him?

“Look, no offense intended, Garrett,” she told him. “But this all can’t be strictly charitable work that’s happening here. After all, you’ve got to be able to survive. No one’s going to fault you for that,” she assured him.

Garrett took a breath. He had to find a way to set her straight and make her understand. “We don’t do it for free—”

“That’s all I’m saying—”

Garrett shook his head. He still didn’t think she understood what Jackson was doing here. “That’s not what I’m hearing, though,” he said. “The parents, or guardians if there’re no parents in the picture, are charged for the teen’s room and board.”

“What else?” Kim prodded.

“There is no ‘else,’” Garrett told her. He hadn’t thought she was jaded, but he’d obviously misjudged her. “I see where you’re going with this and in this case, you’re on the wrong path.” He didn’t want her thinking he was being preachy or coming off holier-than-thou. He had a feeling she’d skewer him, Jackson and the ranch if that was the impression she came away with.

“Not that I didn’t try to get Jackson to charge a little more just so we could get ahead of the game—and by ‘ahead’ I mean get a little money put aside for the low periods so we could keep the place open even if there aren’t enough teens here needing to be set straight for us to cover the bills.”

He paused, trying to choose his words well. If he couldn’t get through to her, from his point of view there would be no reason to continue this interview—but he had a feeling she’d still write a piece and it just might not be the kind he was hoping for—and Jackson would really have a reason to be angry.

That meant he had to get her to understand what they—especially Jackson—were doing here.

“Right now, we’re in the red, which is why I talked Jackson into agreeing to let you do this story.”

“Wait, he doesn’t want me writing about what you’re doing here at the Healing Ranch?” Kim asked, surprised. She assumed that everyone wanted free publicity. The only people who didn’t had something to hide.

“Jackson’s very private and he didn’t want any of the boys put under a microscope, either,” he explained. “I was the one who talked him into it because I was hoping that the exposure might make more people aware of the ranch’s existence. I figure that the more people know, the more people might want to send their kids here. And that way, we get to stay on top of our bills instead of one step ahead of foreclosure.”

She would have to do more research to find out just how much of what Garrett had just said was actually true. He certainly seemed sincere enough—but so did the most successful con artists. Just because Garrett was ruggedly handsome with soulful eyes didn’t make him honest or selfless.

She played devil’s advocate. “That sounds very melodramatic,” she told him.

Garrett shrugged and she found herself captivated by the way his broad shoulders rose and fell.

“It’s also very true—not that that’s something Jackson wants made public, either,” he warned. “I’m only telling you this so that you drop the notion that my brother is lining his pockets with the extorted money of worried-sick parents. The charges vary and depend on how long the kid stays. As for those parents who can’t afford to pay for the Healing Ranch but whose kid really needs to come to a place like this, Jackson lets them make payment schedules they can live with.”

He could see that the woman was still somewhat skeptical. He knew it was against Jackson’s rules, but he gave her an example to back up what he was saying, omitting only the people’s actual names.

“One family’s kid was here when he was twelve—a real hellion, by the way. He’s about to graduate high school this coming June—and they’re still making payments.”

“He charged them that much?” Kim asked, stunned.

“No.” Was the woman baiting him? Garrett wondered. “Jackson made the payments that small—after giving them a discount. The kid’s father was a wounded vet, his mother was an elementary school teacher. They had two more kids at home.” There were times when his brother exasperated him, but he had to admit that when the dust finally settled, he was nothing if not damn proud of Jackson. “I’m the greedy one in the family—Jackson remembers his roots.”

She waited a beat and when Garrett didn’t say anything to fill her in, she asked, “And those roots are—?”

“—for him to tell you about.” Jackson would be the best judge on how much he wanted to let the woman know, Garrett thought. “I’ve already done too much talking,” he told her.

In her view, there was no such thing as too much talking. “I thought this was both your stories,” she pointed out, trying to flatter Garrett. In her experience, people always talked as long as they felt they had a friendly audience.

Garrett, apparently, would be the exception that proved the rule.

“No,” he contradicted. “It’s Jackson’s story. I’m just along for the ride.”

Kim frowned slightly. She sincerely doubted that. From what Stan had told her, it seemed as if both brothers ran this ranch and shared equally in the work it took to oversee anywhere between four to ten teenaged boys at a time. At least half, she assumed, were really problematic.

Garrett began walking again. She fell into place beside him.

“Why boys?” she asked suddenly just before they approached the corral.

The question had come out of the blue without any connection to what she’d asked last. It caught him off guard. “Excuse me?”

“Why boys?” Kim repeated. This question she intended to get an honest answer to, no matter how much he danced around it. “You only have boys here. Why not girls, too?” She watched his face closely as she went on. “Or don’t you and your brother consider girls worth helping?”